Providing safe water with shoes

An international program is offering area residents a chance to easily help developing countries with the world’s No. 1 problem — clean water.

WaterStep, which provides chlorination units to countries needing clean surface water, has partnered with the Iona Group for a third year for a shoe donation.

The shoes are then sold to a third party, and the money is used for production of filtration units to send to communities.

“Our slogan is saving lives with safe water, one family and one community at a time,” WaterStep Chief Operating Officer Greg Holt said.

The partnership with Iona Group started after Denise Henderson traveled to central Ohio to see her mother and stopped by a local church. While there, she saw a box overflowing with shoes, and that vision stayed with her after she returned.

“I started making some phone calls, first that church, and eventually to WaterStep,” Henderson said. “They explained to me that, to come to central Illinois, we would need to collect 4,000 pairs of shoes. I thanked them very kindly for their time, hung up the phone and thought we were done with that.”

After some time had passed, she talked to a group at her church, which wanted to help participate but needed funding.

She then told the Iona Group about WaterStep, which agreed to help support the funding.

The first year, they collected just over 9,000 pairs of shoes, and 13,000 shoes last year.

This year’s goal is 15,000 pairs.

“This is something the community supports. People do not typically buy a lot of used shoes, so they feel this is a way they can help internationally,” she said.

Shoe donations are being accepted at a variety of places in the tri-county area. For a complete listing of drop-off locations, visit http://www.ionagroup.com/shoes/.

Cleaning the water

Holt said that 80 percent of water in developing countries is surface water from rain or other sources that has debris floating in it.

To clean the water, WaterStep’s chlorination system helps clean pre-filtered water through chlorine and electrolysis. The system chlorinates 55 gallons a minute, or 10,000 gallons a day for a community.

“Our goal is to reach about one-and-a-half to two parts per million (of chlorine), which is the standard that the World Health Organization says that water should contain chlorine,” Holt said.

The system is used in a storage tank of water, which contains normally 1,000 gallons.

“What’s happened during that incubation period in that tank is that 99.9 percent of all bacteria has been killed. At that point, it’s safe to drink,” he said.

The last step of the process is the polishing filter, which takes any color out of the water.

The systems are currently in use in 34 countries. However, WaterStep doesn’t just install the systems themselves.

Instead, people from the countries come to Louisville for training on how to use and repair the systems and then go back to their communities. WaterStep then goes and helps with the installation while connecting with the community.WaterStep also has eight-13 teams each year that goes out to the countries to check on the systems.

“In Haiti, we have a full-time staff member there that just travels to all the sites there and report in on how they’re being used,” Holt said.

All owners in countries also have to sign a covenant agreement saying they will provide water to everyone in the community. Otherwise, the system can be taken back by WaterStep.

Currently, there are 1,000 units in the field, and the group wants to add another 500 this year.

Starting shoe collection

The funding for WaterStep comes from two main sources of revenue: individual donations and microbusinesses, such as the shoe collecting.

The funding allows WaterStep to make the chlorination system themselves, instead of contracting from outside the company.

“Because of that, we can keep the cost down,” Holt said.

Holt said the shoe collecting started after meeting a person calling himself the “Shoe Man” in Saint Louis, who would collect the shoes and resell them to countries in need who would sell to citizens there.

Wes Reece, who oversees the shoe collecting program, said that WaterStep no longer has to sort the shoes they receive.

When we collect the shoes and they go out, most of the shoes will be put in bags and boxes. When they get whatever amount of shoes they collect, we don’t even look at those shoes now. When I started with WaterStep three years ago, we did have to separate all those shoes,” Reece said.

The sorting is now done by women in warehouses who come to collect and resell the shoes in their countries. WaterStep sells the shoes by the pound to the exporter.

Reece added that this is a way for shoes to get extended life instead of being thrown away.

“People just won’t, for the most part, purchase used shoes to wear,” he said. “I have a neighbor that had an annual yard sale every year. She had her driveway lined with very nice shoes. Nobody was purchasing the shoes.”

The shoe collection was selected by WaterStep because of how easy it is to help and donate.

“Everybody can be a part of solving the world’s No. 1 problem, and that is a lack of access to safe water,” Holt said.